Five more UK nationals, all of them in their sixties, who were part of a group that fled from quarantine have tested positive for coronavirus in Kerala. Already, a member of that group had tested positive on March 15 and all of them had tried to flee from India. Minister Sunil Kumar said that of the 17 samples sent, 12 were negative and the oldest patient among this is 85 years old.
It was on March 6 that this group of 18 UK nationals had arrived from London and landed at the Nedumbassery International Airport. For the first two days, the group stayed at the Casino Hotel in Willingdon Island, Kochi. The staff and guests at the hotel, who were present when the group stayed there, have now been placed under home quarantine. After touring Kochi, they reached Munnar on March 10. This was when one of them showed symptoms of COVID- 19 and was taken to the Tata Hospital in Munnar. Though they were all asked to be quarantined, on the 14th night, they left the KTDC Tea County in Munnar.
Hours after they left the resort, health officials got results from the lab that the man was indeed coronavirus positive. But by then, the group had already reached the Nedumbassery airport and boarded an Emirates flight to Dubai. Half an hour before the flight was about to take off, almost 290 people, including the tourists, were deplaned. Later, all the other passengers were allowed to leave.
The man who tested positive and his wife were shifted to the Kalamassery Medical College while the others were lodged in a hotel and kept in strict quarantine.
However, tracking the movements of this group for almost a week is a big task ahead for the Idukki and Ernakulam administrations.
It is already known that the group had visited the St Francis Church in Kochi during their stay there. On March 8, the group travelled to Thrissur. In Thrissur, they travelled to many areas including Cheruthururhi. They had lunch at the Residency Hotel in Athirapally. On March 10, the group dined at the Edasseri’s FarmYard restaurant in Adimali, Idukki while enroute to Munnar.